


Something Like Moving On

by GalaxyOwl



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 07:08:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13359102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl/pseuds/GalaxyOwl
Summary: Aria sees the strangely-formatted heading and the worldApostolosand almost dismisses it as spam automatically, then stops short as she processes the rest of the words.(There’s a funeral. Of course there is.)





	Something Like Moving On

The invitation comes in Aria’s mail, mixed in with about a hundred angry tirades about her politics, a few personal messages, a handful of notes more along the lines of fan mail. She sees the strangely-formatted heading and the world _Apostolos_ and almost dismisses it as spam automatically, then stops short as she processes the rest of the words. 

It says, _FUNERAL OF APOKINE CASSANDER TIMAEUS BERENICE TO BE HELD ON APOSTOLOS_.

Something twists in the pit of Aria’s stomach. She can still see Cass, in her head, hear their voice as they try to explain, as they—just before—well.

The war on Rigor ended not all that long ago. Aria and Jacqui have had only a couple months of real peace. A couple months of celebrations and stolen kisses and glasses raised to the uncountable crowds who didn’t make it this far. 

Aria knows what Cass did; the entire sector does. 

God, though, a _funeral_.

Aria sits down hard on her bed, and forces herself to read the rest of the message.

The event is scheduled to be held four months and five days from today’s date. She bites her lip. The Apostolosian homeworld is a four month trip from Counterweight, and that’s _if_ you spring for the fastest ship an ex-revolutionary’s paycheck can get you.

She could attend remotely, if she wanted to. She could watch the news broadcasts after the fact. There are options. None of them are the same thing as actually going. 

Aria thinks of the first and last time she visited Apostolos—Cass’ ridiculous dinner party, the medals and the ceremony, this huge elaborate to-do just to get the four of them all in a room again. They couldn’t have known then that it would be the last time that happened.

Aria cancels the screen and looks up at the empty bedroom. Tears hover at the edge of her vision, which is stupid, because they’ve been dead for months, and Aria already had her whole fucking cry about them, about AuDy, about all the people who were willing to put their lives on the line when she wasn’t. She wipes her sleeve across her eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath.

She’s going, of course. There’s no question about it. 

Aria stands and goes to talk to Jacqui about booking passage coreward.

***

The ship is brightly-lit and well-heated, full of smooth white surfaces and sleek readout screens. It’s certainly the nicest transport Aria’s been on since her EarthHome days. It’s a pity; if they could’ve paid for the speed without the luxury rooms, Aria would have, but no ship old enough to be economical has the kind of engine that can get you halfway across the star sector in four months flat. 

The captain introduces herself when Aria and Jacqui arrive at the dockyard. She smiles gently, and doesn’t ask what business they have on Apostolos, and Aria realizes with a sinking feeling that she probably already knows. 

Jacqui squeezes her hand, and they make their way to their rooms. 

Jacqui hasn’t once complained about Aria springing this on her, because Jacqui is a fucking angel or something. Aria told her maybe a hundred times that she didn’t have to come, that one of them should stay on Counterweight in case things went to hell again; she looked Aria right in the eyes and said, “If things go to hell, I need to be right by your side.” Aria didn’t argue. 

They drop their bags beside the bed, and Aria takes a seat on the plush mattress. Exhales. From here, it’s out of her control: they’ll either get there on time, or they won’t.

There are three other passengers on the ship, besides them and the captain. Two of them, a brother and sister who do a poor job of hiding their curiosity at Aria’s presence, are being dropped off on Garden. The third is an Apostolosian who Aria can only assume is en route for the royal funeral as well. It’s a big event, after all. An important cultural moment, laying aside the last remnants of the old empire. That’s what all the news channels are saying.

Aria should really stop watching the news channels.

That would be a lot easier if there was literally anything to do on this ship _but_ watch the channels, watch the date tick closer and closer to the event in question. 

The journey goes both slower and faster than Aria expected. Her world narrows to the space contained within the ship. She spends days doing nothing at all. Scrolling through feeds and slogging her way through a novel and trying to stay up-to-date on events on Counterweight. The latter feels as if it’s universes away.

They send the siblings on their way, and the world grows even smaller. The Apostolosian avoids eye contact with Aria at breakfast, and Aria resists the burning desire to ask them where they’re headed, whether they knew Cass. 

In the evening, the ship’s overhead lights dimmed to an artificial twilight, Jacqui sits down on the bed next to Aria, who looks up from her screen.

They sit in silence a moment.

“How are you doing?” Jacqui says. “I mean, with everything.”

Aria pushes herself up so that she’s sitting side by side with Jacqui, their bodies touching. She laces her fingers into hers without thinking about it. She doesn’t respond.

“You mean, with Cass?” she says, finally.

“I mean with everything,” Jacqui says. “We almost died, Aria. Rigor almost—“

“I know,” Aria says, leaning her head on Jacqui’s shoulder. “I don’t need you to remind me.” Jacqui said _We almost died_ , and that’s true, in a way, but Aria knows that there was a way this ended where she lived and Jacqui didn’t. She looked down that path and knew it wasn’t worth it. 

Had Cass made that same calculation? Had they decided, when it came down to it, that there wasn’t anything left in their life that they valued over this victory?

Jacqui and Aria sit, in silence, close together. The engine of this ship is quiet, not like the dull, familiar hum of the _Kingdom Come_ ; the only white noise is the sound of faint human movements several rooms down.

“Did you like them?” Aria says, finally.

“Hm?”

“Cass, I mean. What did you think of them?”

“Oh.” Jacqui lifts her head and looks Aria in the face. “I’m not sure, to be honest. They seemed nice, I guess, but…” She trails off.

“But?” Aria racks her brain—what could Cass have done that would leave Jacqui with an impression that ends in _but_?

“But,” Jacqui says, “for as long as I spent on that ship with them, at the time I was only really paying attention to one person.”

Aria laughs softly. “Oh? Who might that be?”

“Well,” Jacqui says, drawing out the word, “there was this pop star that I used to be, like, way into.”

“Mhhmm?”

“Yeah, she was super pretty, and she had this super nice voice, and it turned out that she was also kind of a badass?”

“Jacqs,” Aria says, pulling away for a moment in exaggerated indignation, “you had me beat inches away from death. I don’t understand how you came out of that encounter with the understanding that _I_ was a badass.”

Jacqui breaks into a grin. “Maybe I didn’t,” she says, “but it’s still true.”

Aria laughs. She meets Jacqui’s eyes; they’re a familiar sight now, one she’ll ever get tired of looking at, flecks of color speckling the irises like dark stars. 

Aria leans in and lands a kiss on Jacqui’s lips. Jacqui reaches out a hand and pulls her close, and she buries her face in her partner’s shoulder. “I love you,” Aria murmurs.

***

It’s morning when they touch down on Apostolos. The planet’s sun sets the ocean waves glittering all around them as the ship docks at a spaceport near the edge of one of the largest islands. Jacqui and Aria leave their things onboard and spend the day walking along the beach, laughing and pushing one another into the oncoming waves. Part of Aria feels guilty for turning what should be a somber affair into something so simple and gleeful. But Cass loved this planet. She thinks they’d be happy that Aria is loving it a little bit, too.

But eventually, afternoon rolls around. Aria and Jacqui board a bus for the capital, and the sky overhead darkens to a velvety blue, and they arrive at the funeral only ten minutes before the affairs are scheduled to begin, filing in at the back of the crowd.

The ceremony is begun by someone wearing old-fashioned Apostolosian formalwear, some sort of religious official. Aria doesn’t really follow a lot of what they say; she doesn’t know a lot about Apostolosian religion, and it’s mostly general, nothing to do with Cass in particular. Some words about the Eidolons; something resembling a prayer. 

Was Cass religious? Aria can’t recall them ever really expressing anything like that. But then, they didn’t often talk about Apostolos back in the Chime days to begin with. Maybe it was a private thing, for them. Or maybe it wasn’t, and this is more about appeasing social convention. Aria could understand that.

When the official has finished their words, they open up the floor to speakers. Immediately, a young Apostolosian steps forward from just behind them, nervousness in their posture. It takes a little while before Aria is able to put together who they are. They’re the new Apokine, the first one chosen by the proposed demarchal system. 

They begin their speech by admitting they didn’t know Cass at all, personally, but that they admired them. “Apokine Cassander was a leader during a hard time,” they say, “who had to make a lot of hard choices.” 

After the Apokine steps back, there’s a moment’s quiet; no one moves to speak next right away. Then someone works their way to the front of the crowd, the first in a long string of short mourning speeches that don’t add up to all that much. It’s a lot of people who had worked alongside Cass towards the end, a lot of obscure relatives bitter that there’s no longer a throne for them to make claim to. All Cassander this, and Apokine that, and Aria knows that none of them really knew Cass at all. Maybe it isn’t fair for her to judge, maybe it isn’t their fault, but there’s something infuriating about all of these people acting like they understood the full picture of the thing when they _didn’t_.

There’s a long moment of silence, and then the person leading the ceremony says, “Is there anyone else who would like to say some words?”

A beat of silence.

“I would,” Aria finds herself saying. Then all eyes are on her, and there’s no going back. 

Her name whispers through the crowd. Before, people had been too busy watching the proceedings to notice an OriCon celebrity tucked away among them, but now she has their attention, and they know who she is, and that’s that.

Jacqui squeezes her hand, and Aria forces herself to break away from her grip. The crowd parts, and she starts across the slow, horrible distance to the front. She grows closer, step by careful step, and then she is looking down at a thousand unfamiliar faces.

In her mind, Aria is thirteen again, giving her very first performance, terrified out of her mind.

She takes a breath and rests her shaking hand on the podium, trying to still it. “Um,” she says. “Hello.” No reaction. No real sign of acknowledgment. “My name is Aria Joie.” Polite smiles. They know who she is. “And I was the last person to talk to Cass alive.” 

She stops. Everyone is watching her, waiting, expectant. “I—“ Aria falters. She knows what she needs to say, but the thought of getting all these words out suddenly seems an impossible task. “Cass is—“ Fuck. “Cass _was_ …” 

Her friend. A quick thinker. A reliable medic. Absolutely insufferable. The bravest person she’s ever met. 

She’s shaking hard enough now that she isn’t sure anyone will be able to understand her when she does speak. And it’s ridiculous, because Aria’s _good_ at public speaking. She’s built not one but two careers out of knowing how to work a crowd, but for once she isn’t here to put on a performance. 

She looks across the crowd, seeking out Jacqui’s face. If anything can make this doable, it’s the sight of her. 

Aria clears her throat, buying time. “They were—“ she starts again, and stops short at the sight of a familiar face that isn’t Jacqui’s. 

Mako Trig is standing in the crowd amidst all of the strangers, watching her with a guarded expression. He meets her gaze, after a moment’s staring, and flashes her a smile.

(It occurs to her to wonder whether it’s really him. She knows things got... complicated, after September. But, no; why else would he be here, if it wasn’t him? If he hadn’t been drawn here by the same strings of fate that pulled her away from her revolution?)

“Well, they were a lot of things,” Aria says. A full sentence. That’s something. “And I could talk about how they were a leader to the Apostolosian people, or how hard they fought for them. But you heard all of that. I want to talk about…”

Aria gives a speech. It isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t cover everything, and it’s awkward and rambling but it’s sincere. Mako nods along as she tells the story of one of the times Cass saved both of their lives. She tries her best to do them justice. And then it’s over. (It felt like she was up there for hours, at the time, but she’ll later learn it was barely three minutes. Her speech will be the most minor of footnotes in the long history of the Pelagios rulers.)

 ***

She finds him, afterwards, when all of the speeches and rituals are finished, and buries him in a hug. 

“Uh,” Mako says, “hi, Aria, you’re kind of crushing me.”

She releases him, although Aria’s sure she isn’t strong enough to have been causing any actual problems. “Sorry.” 

She wonders if she ever would have hugged him like that, back during the Chime days. She doesn’t think so. But her emotions are running high today, and it is so, so good to see his face. Normalcy be damned.

“Good to see you too, I guess, though also kind of weird.”

“Yeah,” she says. 

Neither of them say anything next. They just stare at one another. His hair is different, Aria thinks. It’s a stupid thing to notice.

There’s a hand on her back as Jacqui approaches. Aria turns, her gaze flitting between Mako and Jacqui. 

“Good job,” Jacqui says, “with the speech.”

“Yeah,” Mako says, “it was, uh, it was really good?”

“Thanks,” she says quietly. 

“Um,” Mako says. “Right, well. It was good to see you—both of you”—he nods at Jacqui—“but I should probably get going soon.”

“What?” How can he leave now, already? There’s so much they could talk about. So much only Mako could understand, about Cass (and about AuDy, who never got a funeral), about how it’s so fucked up that they’re the only ones left. She didn’t expect to see him, but now that he’s here, there has to be more to this than this one awkward conversation on the green by an Apostolosian holy site.

“Yeah,” he says, “I—“

“Jacqui,” Aria says, inspiration seizing her, “we were talking about grabbing dinner in the city afterwards, weren’t we? Mako, you should join us. We should catch up.”

Mako hesitates. (What a sight: Mako Trig, hesitating.) 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I—it’s, you know, it’s a long flight back. I should really be getting going as soon as possible. I’ve got a lot of work waiting for me back at HQ, and, you know…” He lets the sentence hang there, as if this explains anything at all.

“Okay,” Aria says, “yeah, okay. I get it.” Silence hangs between them. “You... have a nice flight. Be safe, and all that.”

“Hey, no promises.” In an instant, he’s all smiles again, just like old time. 

Maybe that can be enough. It has to be, right? Aria smiles back. “Call me sometime, okay? It’s been too long.”

He wavers again for a moment, then nods. “Definitely. I’ll see you around, Aria.”

Then he’s gone.

Aria stares at the spot where he was just standing for longer than she’d like to admit. Jacqui takes her hand, and her grip is firm and warm and familiar. Aria blinks, and looks at her.

“You okay?” Jacqui says.

Aria isn’t sure, not right now. But when Jacqui asks, she thinks that maybe tomorrow she will be.


End file.
